the wild fair head, under the
quivering chin, while he quieted her with grave admonitions, as if he
were her father. Then he led poor Henry Leeds--still crying out that
he would not have the doctor--into his house and his bedroom, and got
him to bed, though it was a hard task.

"I tell you, Henry," pleaded Jerome, struggling with him to loosen
his neck-band, "you shall not have the doctor; I'll doctor you
myself."

"You don't know how--you don't know how, J'rome! She'll say you don't
know how; she'll send for him, an' then, when he's got all my land,
how am I goin' to get them a livin'?"

"I tell you, Doctor Prescott sha'n't darken your doors, Henry Leeds,
if you'll behave yourself," said Jerome, stoutly; "and I can break up
a fever as well as he can, if you'll only let me. Mother broke up one
for me, and I never forgot it. You let me get your clothes off and
get you into bed, Henry."

Jerome had had some little experience through nursing his mother,
but, more than that, had the natural instinct of helpfulness,
balanced with good sense and judgment, which makes a physician.
Moreover, he worked with as fiery zeal as if he were a surgeon in a
battle-field. Soon he had Henry Leeds in his feather bed, with all
the wedding quilts and blankets of poor young Laura piled over him.
The fire was almost out, for the girl was a poor house-keeper, and
not shod by nature for any of the rough emergencies of life. Jerome
had the fire blazing in short space, and some hot water and hot
bricks in readiness.

Poor young Laura Leeds had to go almost half a mile for her healing
herbs, as the first neighbor was away from home and no one came in
answer to her knocks. By the time she returned, with a stout
neighboring mother at her side--both of them laden with dried
aromatic bouquets, and the visitor, moreover, clasping a bottle or
two of household panaceas, such as camphor and castor-oil--Jerome had
the sick man steaming in a circle of hot bricks, and was rubbing him
under the clothes with saleratus and water.

Jerome's proceedings might not have commended themselves to a school
of physicians; but he reasoned from the principle that if remedies
were individually valuable, a combination of them would increase in
value in the proportion of the several to one. Sage and thoroughwort,
sarsaparilla, pennyroyal, and burdock--nearly every herb, in fact, in
the neighbor's collection--were infused into one black and eminently
flavored tea, int